


When in Britannia

by Nightfoot



Series: Goretober 2016 [2]
Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Gen, Ritual Sacrifice, goretober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8227492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightfoot/pseuds/Nightfoot
Summary: A short for Goretober 2016.  Roman centurion Flynn has a nasty run in with a village of Celts.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm picking and choosing from two different Goretober lists and doing them out of order. This is for "ritualistic sacrifice."

Flynn Scifo,  primus pilus  of the second legion of Augustus, centurion in command of one hundred troops, sat in a hut. His knees ached from how long he’d been sitting on them, but with his wrists and ankles bound around a post supporting the thatch roof, he didn’t have much choice.

All things considered, he was not enjoying Britannia. The dreary skies dumped rain day after day, making for miserable marches. It was damp and cool, and he hated the thought of being on an island, so cut off from the rest of the world. He wasn’t sure why Caesar even wanted this rainy island so much, and would rather maintain their borders on the mainland than participate in this invasion. He missed their outpost in Germania, where at lest the barbarians didn’t cover themselves in inhuman blue paint when they came charging into battle. And importantly, those barbarians had never bested his centuria in battle.

He’d called for a retreat when it became clear they were being overrun. At the top of a hill, he’d turned back to see that the final contubernia had been cut off by the Britons, and the eight soldiers still standing were surrounded. Under no circumstances could he give his men up for lost and run away, so he turned around and charged into the throng of shirtless, blue-painted warriors. He managed to cut down a few of them, and broke an opening in their ranks that allowed his legionaries to break out. They tried to assist him, but Flynn had furiously shouted for them to regroup with the rest of the centuria. They obeyed, and Flynn was swarmed.

He hadn’t expected to survive at all. The Britons may have less advanced weapons and hardly any armour, but their blades were still sharp and it was only common sense that they’d eventually cut him down. It had been a surprise, then, when he instead found himself disarmed and marched at spear-point to their village. Heavy wooden walls surrounded a cluster of round huts, each with a steeply conical thatch roof. Villagers quieted and watched him pass; mothers grabbed their curious children and pulled them away. It was somehow odd to see British children. His only interaction with the natives of this land were the warriors.

He’d been taken to a small hut, his armour and left him in just his tunic, and then tied to one of the posts holding up the roof. That had been several hours ago, and his injuries from the fight had had time to sink in and make themselves known. Perhaps they planned to hold him hostage to negotiate being left alone, but Flynn didn’t have much hope in Commander Vespasian exchanging all of this territory for a single centurion. If only he could speak the British language and explain this to them.

It didn’t seem like he had much hope of breaking out of here on his own, but he wouldn’t give up hope yet. His centuria had always been fiercely loyal to him, and perhaps they’d ignored his order to retreat. The unit he’d charged in to rescue had seemed reluctant to leave him behind, after all. Maybe they were already regrouping and marching to the village.

The wooden door swung in and a pair of men entered. Flynn eyed them with trepidation as they approached. They weren’t the shirtless, painted warriors he was used to dealing with, but older, with greying hair and brown robes. One of them stood before him holding a loop of verbena flowers tied in a cord. He spoke, but not to Flynn, which didn’t matter because Flynn didn’t understand a word anyway. Then he lowered the flowers around Flynn’s neck and stepped away. The petals tickled his neck and Flynn had to wonder why these people were giving him flowers. The second one stepped in next and crouched in front of him. He gave some sort of instruction while holding a bronze cup toward him. The fading sun through the doorway reflected on the whirls engraved on the gleaming surface. Flynn got the impression he was meant to drink it, so he opened his mouth.

The man tipped the cup into his mouth, but after the first mouthful, he twisted his head away and spat it out. It was mead, but the most awful tasting variety he’d ever had. Flynn had never liked mead much in the first place, but they had added some supremely bitter flavour to it that made his nose wrinkle. He couldn’t imagine what purpose this drink was supposed to serve, because surely they hadn’t thought it would be a refreshing drink as an act of decency to their prisoner. He coughed and the first man slapped him across the face. The man with the drink held it forward and spoke again, certainly telling Flynn to keep drinking. Flynn, who still couldn’t get the flavour out of his mouth, suspected it was poison and kept his lips sealed. He didn’t know the point of poisoning him when they’d already gone through the trouble of not killing him in battle, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

The one who had held the flowers said something with irritation and then gripped Flynn’s jaw and squeezed. Flynn’s mouth was forced open as the fingers dug painfully into his cheeks, and his head was tilted backward. The other poured the foul drink into his mouth and then used his other hand to cover Flynn’s mouth when he tried to close his throat and keep it from going down. The man’s grip on his head was move than he could shake off and when the need to breathe became to great, he was forced to swallow. He’d barely gotten that one down when the man resumed forcing his mouth open so the rest of the cup could be poured down his throat. Flynn didn’t bother fighting it this time

When he’d swallowed, he sucked in air through his mouth to try to quell the taste. One of the men then cut the ropes and they hauled him to his feet. After kneeling for hours, his knees were stiff and he stumbled as they led him out of the hut. The low sun cast long shadows on the empty paths through the village. Where were all the residents? The men led him back the way they’d come in, through the thick wooden gate and into the fields around the village. Perhaps they were taking him to another village. They took him around the wall to the other side of the village, where he found the rest of the residents. The few dozen people were gathered around a grove of oak trees, in the centre of which was a large grey stone with a roughly level surface. Whirls and spirals like the patterns on the cup had been carved into the rock.

When he got closer, he was able to make out the pattern on the level surface. It was a three-pronged spiral; an image he’d seen frequently since arriving in Britain. Three individual spirals flowed together into a triangle shape in the middle. The Britons were obsessed with the number three, from what he’d seen. They had gods that were actually three different gods all rolled into one, which reminded him of something from that new Christian cult.

After looking away from the rock, he took in the cloaked people standing closest to it. One held a knife, one a rope, and the other a bone club. Flynn took in the ring of villagers, the wicked sharpness of the knife, and the table-like rock that screamed ‘altar’, and knew exactly why they hadn’t killed him on the battlefield. They’d wanted to kill him  special .

Flynn slammed his elbows into the men holding his arms, throwing them off. In their surprise, he broke away and took off into the field. Shouts came close behind, but Flynn paid them no heed. He’d long ago accepted that death in battle was a possible consequence of being a soldier, but he wouldn’t lie there and be used as a sacrifice for his enemies’ gods. If a soldier died, he was supposed to go down fighting, not thrown on an altar like a slaughtered pig. He ran in the general direction his troops had retreated in earlier, hoping they were also marching toward him, but his steps weren’t going as fast as he would have liked. The horizon was moving uncertainly, too, and he wondered just what had been in that drink they’d forced on him. He slowed down, weakness sinking through his muscles. Villagers were closing in on him, and in seconds they were upon him.

Flynn fought. The villagers hadn’t come prepared for a battle, so they were as unarmed as he was. He might have even been able to fight them all off if not for the wooziness. Her certainly injured plenty of them, proving that the military training of Rome didn’t end with swords. Hands clutched at him and he kept moving, twisting, punching, doing everything in his power to throw them off. It wasn’t enough, though. He was too dizzy and there were too many villagers, and he couldn’t keep them off him forever. They grasped his arms and wrapped the own around his torso, holding him steady as he struggled against them. A pair of men grabbed one of his legs and pulled it out, holding it still so he couldn’t kick.

The man with the club made from the leg bone of some animal approached. The villagers fell quiet and looked to him with reverence. While they were distracted, he tried putting up a fight again, but they hadn’t loosened their grips enough. The club wielder stood before Flynn, raised his club, and then swung it down on Flynn’s lower leg. His grunt was muffled by the loud  crack and then his crooked leg was released to fall to the ground. When it hit the dirt, another spike of pain shot up through his knee and all the way to his chest.

“No,” he gasped when the man grabbed his other leg. His slumped into the villager’s arms, unable to support his weight on his newly broken leg. “Not that one, too.” They didn’t understand him, and he doubted they would have heeded his words even if they had. He tried to kick their hands away for the principle of the thing, but as expected, it didn’t do much good. The strongest of the men gripped his ankle and pulled tight, making a straight surface for the club-wielder to strike. Flynn couldn’t keep from shouting this time as his shin splintered.

The villagers at last released him and he crumpled to the ground. His legs lay twisted beneath him, as broken as he dreams of running far away from here and reuniting with his centuria. The two men who had originally brought him here returned to grab him under the armpits and forced him up. They wrapped his arms around their shoulders and dragged him back through the grass toward the altar. His feet slid over rough patches of grass or small stones, each movement send waves of pain through his shattered legs. He couldn’t help wonder if his legs would ever heal properly and allow him to run freely again, but then he looked at the altar and remembered that it wouldn’t matter.

“Bastards,” Flynn panted. He wanted to tear away from the men holding him, but even putting an ounce of weight on his legs threatened to make him throw up. The drug working through his system didn’t help, making all the voices louder and distorted.

Another cloaked figure approached him with a bronze goblet in hand. The cloaked man dipped his finger in and it came out dripping with blood. It was probably from a pig, but in Flynn’s panicking mind told him it must be human. He jerked his face away when the blood finger reached for him, the flowers around his neck tickling his throat.

“Get away from me!”

One of the people holding him grabbed the back of his head and twisted his face forward. A blood finger pressed into his forehead three times, leaving wet spots dripping into his eyebrows. The cloaked man - or priest, or druid, or whatever these people called their religious leaders - re-dipped his finger and traced a straight line down the bridge of his nose, then repeated for two more lines running from the spots to his jaw, smearing blood over his eyelids. Coppery blood so close to his nose at least masked the scent of the flowers.

The bloody man moved aside and Flynn was dragged toward the altar. “Let go,” he pleaded futilely. If he had to die for a god, he wished he it could have been Mars, or Jupiter, or at least one that he actually cared for and not these barbarians’ gods. They turned him around and pushed him onto the rock so the uneven surface dug into his back. His mangled legs bent over the edge and before he could try to sit up, two people grabbed his arms and held him down. The druid with the knife stood at the edge of the stone and held the iron blade over Flynn’s chest.

“Curse all of you!” Flynn struggled against the men holding him down. Every movement sent stabs of pain through his legs, but he barely even noticed it.

The knife came down, but didn’t pierce his skin. The druid cut through the front of Flynn’s tunic, down to the belt, and pushed the fabric aside to bare Flynn’s chest. The two other weapon-wielders came forward and took up position around the altar. The knife on his right, the braided cord on his left, and the club behind his head. Flynn wondered which of these was meant to kill him, and then considered the Britons’ obsession with triplicates. What could be more sacred to these barbarians than killing a victim three different ways at the same time.

Flynn breathed heavily and his heart pounded against his ribs, like it was trying to escape a body it knew was doomed. “Fine. Kill me for your blasted gods. I’ll see all of you in the underworld when Vespasian comes through and destroys you.” If only they understood Latin so that at least he’d have the satisfaction of shouting at them.

The druid with the cord wrapped it around his neck and pulled until it began digging into his throat. The knife-wielder raised his blade again and Flynn wished he could keep his chest from rising up to meet it as he too deep breaths. He opened his mouth to curse them again, but then the cord tightened and his words cut off in a choke. The thin cord bit his throat and he thrashed his head and shoulders to try to throw it off. It took so little pressure to cut off someone’s air.

The knife came down in a flash and plunged into his stomach. His scream was strangled out by the garrote but he managed to swing his broken legs up to kick the man away. Two more participants stepped forward to grab his knees and pin them to the rock. The hands gripping his arms held him down so firmly they’d leave bruises if he lived long enough for them to develop.

Blood smeared across his stomach as the blade sank into his abdomen. Flynn longed to scream but the garrote dug into his neck so tight it burned and it made it impossible to make any noise beyond gurgles and moans. His blood dripped down his sides and onto the carved stone.

Gods, why did they have to draw this out? Couldn’t they just slit his throat and be done with it? Every time his vision dipped into blackness he hoped that he’d open his eyes and find himself in the vast, peaceful fields of Elysium. But when he closed his eyes, he didn’t feel the warm breeze of paradise, just another puncture that began blurring together with all the rest so his torso was nothing but a burning mass of pain, and when he opened his eyes he saw nothing but the emotionless face of the club-wielder looming over him.

His struggles were growing weak from the blood loss and lack of air. Flynn prayed the man strangling him would pull tighter and let him pass out before the stab wounds became any worse. The man with the club lifted it high. Two extremes of emotion rushed through him: dread that he was about to die, and gratefulness that it was about to be over. Please, bring that thing down hard and cave his skull in to end his sensation.

The man lifted his arms up - and then staggered. The club dropped from his hands and he looked down at himself in confusion. The garrote loosened and Flynn took a deep gasp of air before paying any attention to what was going on.

Shouts rang out from the distance and the villagers’ voices raised in answer. An arrow stuck out of the club-wielder’s chest and the strangler turned around to see what was happening. Shouts got louder, and closer, accompanied by the clink of armour. Flynn had never been so glad to hear Latin.

“Release arrows! Forward march!”

His centuria was here.

The villagers were shouting themselves and running for their homes to arm themselves. The man who’d been about to crush Flynn’s skull lay collapsed on the ground, and more bodies dropped as the Roman archers fired into the crowd.

And then, stillness. Blood rushed in Flynn’s ears and he took long, burning breaths. The garrote was still embedded in his skin, but no one held it tight. Each breath brought the scent of blood and flowers, which swirled together in his fading consciousness. Soldiers ran toward the altar and he dimly heard their frightened voices calling for him. He lacked the strength the answer, but figured they’d see his heaving chest as he struggled to breathe. The villagers had been taken by surprise this time, so Flynn trusted his troops to secure a victory in this battle without his leadership.

Flynn closed his eyes. Maybe he’d awake next time in a medical tent preparing to be sent back to Rome for a lengthy recovery. Maybe he’d awake in gently rolling hills of the Elysian Fields and put military life behind him. At this point, he honestly didn’t care.

**Author's Note:**

> Usually when I write a history AU, I try to be as accurate as possible. In this case, I based this story on archaeological evidence, sensationalized Roman propaganda, and making things up. There is very little evidence that Celts ever sacrificed Roman prisoners, and archaeologists debate whether they sacrificed anyone at all. If they did, it would have been members of their own tribes. The wounds suffered by Flynn are based on evidence found on bog bodies that _may_ have been sacrificial victims, but anything that wouldn't leave physical evidence was made up.


End file.
